For such an unlucky number, this gal has been nothing but a lucky charm for us.

Meet "HF Jewel's Kissed Out Red Floatboat," or, as we call her, Flo.

Flo was our first and only intended retention.  Without interest from any of our nine children in carrying on the legacy of our farm, we felt that it was absolutely necessary to think far ahead to make sure that all of these horses that we love so much have a happy sunset and retirement along with our own.  To that end, we plan on retiring our breeding and foaling efforts no later than the one or two foals we would like to have in the year 2038 (God willing we are still here and doing this labor of love at that future time).

This planned end date, and the fact that we've decided that once a mare hits her 16th birthday, we will no longer breed her, meant that we ideally would not like to have ongoing concern for fillies and mares born after 2022.  Flo was born in 2022.  That makes her the only retention we will ever intend to indulge ourselves with.

Flo's mother, Jewel, previously introduced, was a gray mare that had been trained for driving.  Her sire, also previously introduced, is Nazareth, a chestnut sabino stallion who also carries one copy of the Pearl gene.

Jewel was a maiden mare.  That seems to be our lot in the breeding business...breaking in maiden mares.  We always seem to have two or three of them every year.  Without going too far out on a tangent, maiden mares are more challenging overall.

Jewel was a champ, though.  She had a daytime birth.  She gave us this impish filly topped all over with the red from Naz.  We knew she was likely chestnut-based sabino.  We were on the fence about whether or not she was gray.  We did all of the good and regular things that we do with all our foals which included the full battery of color/pattern/disease marker DNA tests.

I still remembered getting her DNA results and reading them for the first time.  I remember visibly trembling.  ee, yep, chestnut.  Aa - ok, she got her daddy's Agouti gene.  W20 - yep, got that from momma.  PATN1 - got that from momma...won't show, but it's a nice add-on.  SB1 - yep, sabino like we thought.  PRL - nice!  Got that from daddy.  Gray - holy cow!  

She had every single genetic marker from both of her parents other than Jewel's extension (E) gene (which would've made her bay-based with that Agouti instead of chestnut-based).  Chestnut based Gray Sabino carrying Pearl and Pattern-1 with a standard W20 marker opposite that Sabino gene and also one Agouti.

And, all of her disease markers came back negative per expectations.

Shortly after her birth, Etalon Equine Genetics featured her on some of their social media due to her wide variety of heterozygous characteristics and her sweet looking photos (the first face-on photo below).

As we got to know her better, she also had the smoothest, sweetest, calm nature.  Our keeper was definitely a keeper!

She's also the genesis of one of the worst "dad jokes" I've ever told to Jen.  Haha!

"You know how I know that I don't have to halter Jewel and she'll follow me right back into the paddock?"

"No, how?"

"I know that she'll just go with the Flo."

We generally wean around 4 to 4 1/2 months old depending on both how momma is doing and how the foal seems to be doing.  Flo was a July baby.  That meant a target weaning likely in November.

November rolled around.  She was doing well, but, gosh, she was quite a bit smaller than some of our other foals.  Momma looked great and was keeping on good weight.  We gave her another month.  December rolled around.  She seemed to have frozen in place with growth rate.  Doubt started creeping in about my feeding and care regimen.  We gave her until sometime in January before we weaned her.  She was still a tiny, little, wooly thing.  She lightened up quite a bit, though, so that the only red you could see on her was the hairs coming out of her ears (all white now).

She shed out in the spring and had quite an awful, gangly yearling year, but she plumped right up toward the end of the summer...at about 11hh.

That's when we decided to run a few more tests on her.  Apparently, both sire and dam also contributed an H2 gene.  She was H2/H2.  She was officially, on top of all of her other genetic bling, a fullbred Gypsy Vanner mini (with a really nice pedigree).

This past year was a period of reflection for us, and a narrowing in on goals.  We want horses 14.1hh and under, but we also decided that it would be a nice add-on to have a smaller side project with Gypsy Vanner minis.  We are also going to focus more on traditional driving horses than riding horses.  We've added a mini stallion and another mini mare to this side project.  We have high hopes for Flo and her new munchkin crew (and...more on our other minis later).